Ana S Gonzalez Rueda: Unknowing and other ways of learning with art

This workshop will focus on exploring the underlying educational links of contemporary art exhibitions and alternative ways of learning. We will start by looking at critical curatorial approaches that oppose the conception of the spectator as an 'entertained consumer' and propose other, experimental ways of knowing. The session will introduce participants to specific ideas from posthumanist, decolonial, and feminist educational theory and their potential applicability to curatorial practice. For instance, we will consider the notion of education as a movement across boundaries (Maxine Greene), or the understanding of learning as ‘getting lost’ (Patti Lather). We will then work both in the exhibition space and with a variety of mediation materials to uncover and discuss underlying educational relations. Participants will also be encouraged to explore and test the usefulness of radical pedagogies in relation to their own practice. The workshop itself adopts unpredictability as an educative principle that rejects predefined learning outcomes.